President Trump, VP Pence, Trumpists, Neo Nazis, Alt Rights, and other defenders of The Patriarchy;
I understand you, as a collective. I may not know all of you as individuals, but I’ve listened to your collective cries. I know what you value. I understand your fears. I understand your struggles. I know the world paradigm in which you live your lives, and I understand it fully–because I used to live in that paradigm. Trump, I know why you think like you think. Pence, I know and see who you are at heart and I understand how that influences your beliefs.
I come from a town filled with people who think like you. Hell, I used to think like you! In my town, misogyny was a household practice, racism was a respected form of humor, love was full of conditions, and ego was the only thing worthy of unconditional defense.
I know you’ve received a lot of grief over the last 8 years. An Obama presidency felt like a betrayal for many of you. You had to start being more “politically correct” in public–something which greatly repressed your humor and your feelings. You had to censor some of your thoughts because they started getting you into a little bit of trouble with co-workers, strangers, and old friends from the internet.
Not trouble like a black boy running down the street with a toy gun in front of white cops, not trouble like a woman who wanted to feel sexy that day so she dresses nice but while walking to work she turns a corner to realize 4 large, predatorial men are following her–not that kind of trouble. Trouble, more like a 12 year old boy who says the F word at the wrong time/place and gets corrected by his mother. That has been really tough for you, I know! You’re not used to being told you’re wrong or you need to fix or change anything. Mama always said you were perfect just as you were.
In fact, many of you were used to doing to telling!! It was in your power. Your vote and words had the control to tell your opposition how to live for so long, how dare they try to teach you how to think! You told them how to identify themselves, their beliefs, their values. You told them who to be in order to succeed in this world and gave them no alternative options but failure and poverty. You took away reproductive rights from decision making citizens and offered military service as a career to desperate young people in a time of economic recession and war. You have been controlling other’s lives for a long time–so I know being told how to treat people (or how NOT to MIStreat people) has been really hard on you. I’m sure it’s felt repressive…one might even say oppressive. Not as oppressive as being a POC in a society build on slavery and revolving around white people, but as oppressive as it feels for people of privilege to allow other people the same privileges they don’t realize they have–as oppressive as finding equality in a society that depends on inequality.
Then something happened… Trump won the election! With the help of the electoral college, you got what you’ve been craving for years.
I know you thought this would be enough to justify your bigotry. I know you thought this would support the objectification of your wives and daughters, the oppression of your fellow citizen, and the demonizing of honest and true values of equality that do not align with your own. I’m sure you thought that winning the White House (which now sits empty as our taxes pay for a secret service in NYC and AF1’s commute from NYC to DC and back whenever Trump decides to be the President instead of the head of his own company) would be enough to silence us petty, annoying, progressive, bleeding heart, hippy liberals. I know you thought you’d be able to drop your political correctness and live how you really think you deserve to be living your life–free of having to think about the well-being of people whose lives are distant and harder than yours. I know you think your world, which has been so threatened by 8 years of liberal America, will be reinstated and your power will be definite.
I’m sorry to tell you, but in the words of your precious president–you’re wrong.
I am writing, truly, to thank you for exposing your closet bigotry for the world to see. We–especially those of us basking in the liberal enlightenment of CA– could not have known how many people in the US still think like you if this had not happened. Had Hilary been elected, you might have gotten away with keeping those opinions in their protective closet of your subconscious. You might have kept those conversations behind closed doors. It’s too late now though–you’ve exposed yourselves, and the whole world has seen it. You’ve shown the majority of the US, those of us who won the popular vote, what we still have to squash out of this world.
In showing us your truth, in displaying it for the world to see, you’ve done something truly incredible.
You’ve awoken an ancient rage. A rage so primal that the entire universe anticipated it in its creation billions of years ago. A rage so powerful that the Earth wept when she felt it coming, stopped for the day of its deliverance, and then wept again until the droughted desert landscape of California found itself a wealth of rainfall more plentiful than it’s inhabitants have experienced in a decade. You’ve brought to the foreground a rage so powerful that it awoke millions of individuals, not only in this country, but around the world, to the indignity human beings have suffered for millennia under the reign of the Patriarchy–your world. So empowering is this rage that it sparked a shift in Earth’s collective energy comparable in intensity and impact to the shift of poles in our planet’s magnetic field. People have been awoken, so quickly and so intensely, that it has made a global impact.
After the Women’s March on Jan 21, many of you have expressed your discontent. Many of you have expressed fears. Fear that equality will lessen your privileges. Fear that you’ll be less important or powerful if women have the same rights as you. Fear that you’ll lose your values, or the world will smudge you out if it differs too much from you. You’ve expressed fear that the world we fight for will destroy the one you’ve worked so hard to build for yourself.
Most of your fears are irrational in the natural world. Acknowledging someone else’s struggle won’t make yours less significant, or less difficult. Equality does not seek to strip you of your privileges, but to give everyone those same privileges. Diversity does not mean that you will lose your values, in fact diversity allows you to keep your values even when someone else has opposing ones. Allowing someone else freedom over their life will not give you less freedom over your own life. It will simply mean you are no longer able to control other people–which is none of our natural right anyway.
However, you are absolutely correct about one fear.
If you’re afraid that We, the Nasty Women, the Black Lives, the non-believers, the oppressed people of our world who fight for equality, are threatening to destroy your world–you are absolutely correct. We are not only threatening, we are planning and working tirelessly to make it so. We are planning to deconstruct and dismantle your world, brick by brick, mind by mind, belief by belief, ignorant alternative fact by alternative fact, until your precious patriarchy is simply an example of and warning against tyranny and oppression made to our future’s children in history books.
Make no mistake, the world as you know it is most certainly under attack.
Your world is one where men are the final authority simply because of the anatomy hanging between their legs, where religion gets to make political decisions about non-religious citizens, where non-white lives are less valuable than white lives and the police enforce it, where prisons make citizens a slave–chattel to the system, where money makes a worker an indentured servant, where appearance increases your worth more than intellect or character or kindness, where you cannot be powerful unless someone else is powerless. That world–your world– is under fierce attack. We will not cease until that world is submerged in the purifying waters of righteousness, justice, and true equality and reborn as an equal society where all people can live fulfilling, individual, unique and free lives.
Your world is under attack by a radical group of divine Earth protectors.
We are the witches you couldn’t burn. We are the slaves you couldn’t break. We are the genders you couldn’t pin down into a binary. We are the Natives you couldn’t assimilate. We are the beaten, the broken, the downtrodden that you could not make compliant because we kept standing back up to spit in your face every time. We are the bleeding hearts and artists, the thinkers and creators, the angel headed hipsters, the teachers of your children and the force which keeps your head spinning in circles while you try to find the groundless supports of hate and greed on which you cannot stand any longer. We are the intellect which shatters your ignorance. We are the truth seekers, the seers, the defenders of knowledge and universal understanding. We are the collective consciousness. We are the breakers of tradition, the innovators of the New World, the builders of bridges over divisive gaps. We are the future, living now.
We stand on the shoulders of those who have fought and lived and died before us. We stand on a tall totem of empowered and fearless individuals from whom we collect our strength, our perseverance, our vigilance and our vision for a better tomorrow. We lift onto our shoulders those who come after us, that they may continue this fight long after we are gone and maintain vigilant in the upholding of equality, justice, and freedom once it is truly been achieved. We are in this fight for the long haul, and have been throughout all of time. We have nothing left to lose and everything to gain. We are the once silent majority who will not be ignored any longer. We are the universe, incarnate, fighting for itself–fighting for us all.
We are the feminists–a title which seeks to give justice and equality to ALL beings regardless of their race, gender, identity, religion, beliefs, anatomy, appearance, ability, or anything else.
We are the Social Justice Warriors and we are here to defeat your precious Patriarchy.
Though you have attempted to enshroud our world in your shadow of darkness and ignorance, we are the light. We will not go silent into the night, in fact we howl with the night’s nocturnal creatures and revel in their song. We dance when the demons come calling. We have not been hiding or dying in the darkness. While you have hidden in the false lights of corrupt religion and selfish morals, we have made a home in the darkness you have put us in. We have studied and dissected the shadow you’ve been keeping us in and we now know it better than you. Your shadow is the demon you’ve ignored, and we have made ourselves well acquainted with it, simply because you’ve given us no other option.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned–and you shall feel the wrath of the Matriarchy you have scorned for thousands of years from every spirit and soul that has ever been oppressed by your Patriarchy.
Your world is under attack, now more than ever.
Your world is one in which another must fail for you to succeed, in which another’s face must be under your foot for you to feel tall, in which your ego is more important to defend than another’s life, in which your fears take priority over someone else’s existence, in which your wealth and health only come at the cost of someone else’s, in which the competition of the capitalist “free” market is controlled, censored, and naturally streamlined into sameness–making it anything but free. The old world is one in which being born straight, white, christian, cis gender, and/or male makes you more important, more superior, more relevant, or more right simply because you are more privileged. The old world is ruled by the divine rights of kings and psychotic narcissists, justified by “alternative facts”, and held together by the blood, sweat and tears of people you do not even acknowledge as human.
In your old world, Religion is a capitalist venture. God is money, worshiped in houses built of money, while those without your “God” to look to are starving to death, shunned and murdered for their beliefs, and being trampled on by Imperialism, and supremacist greed. In your world, Jesus is white and children are born sinful. In your world, youth is a goal of the old, but the young are not respected for their wisdom. In your world, sex is currency and respect is mandatory–but only for your values, beliefs, and priorities–and your men.
This world which you have chosen was built on genocide, slavery, lies, hatred, greed and Imperialism.
We propose, and fight for, a New World.
The New World will be built on true equality, justice, integrity, honesty, transparency and freedom. Our New World will see all living Beings as equal, and will respect them as such. This New World will allow for all religious beliefs, including those which may not be established by an Abrahamic prophet, to be seen as equally valid and acceptable. The New World is built to consider all perspectives, all experiences, all minds, all bodies, all spirits–not just those who fit a certain societal default.
In the New World, God/Goddess/The Universe/Nature/Spirit will be as individual and unique an experience as the person who does or does not believe in him/her/it/they. In the New World, nature will be respected and cherished, the planet will be considered an extension of humanity–a part of the cycle of existence which cannot be mistreated or ignored without major consequences for all of us. (This is true in our current world, its just that half the population would ignore that fact to make a dollar… or a billion dollars.)
In the New World all people will enjoy the same privileges, the same freedoms, the same rights as all other people.
The New World is not built for money or war, it is not built for hate or intolerance. It is not built for ignorance or ego trips. The New World is built by The People, and it is for all of us. The New World does not force anyone into a role they do not wish to play or a life they do not wish to lead. The New World upholds all of this, not just with words on a document or empty promises, but with intense activism and work by the people, on behalf of the people.
The New World is not a fantasy or a Utopia. It has enemies, it has struggles, it has difficulties. We all still have to find our way, our sense of self, our comforts for existential living. We still walk our own paths and deal with the struggles of our own journey. Equality is not Utopian. It has to be able to shift and change when new information or new perspectives are presented. But in the New World, the struggles are normal and tolerable because we remember always that we have each other. We belong to each other. We need each other. We take care of each other. We do not decide to cut off healthcare for millions because we want to pay less–we care for each other enough not to mind paying a bit more so a 25 year old who is new to their field and making entry level wages doesn’t have to die of cancer because her she cannot afford her medical bills no matter how hard she works. We do not write off the stories of others as fake or illegitimate because we have not had those experiences ourselves. We do not assume that people who are suffering are playing the victim. We do not stigmatize and punish illness, mental or physical. We give everyone the benefit of the doubt first and foremost.
In the New World, we will be judged only by the content of our character, and even those with questionable character will be given the opportunity to learn, grow, rehabilitate, recover, and better themselves.
The New World may not be the one you are used to, but I promise you do not have to fear this New World. It will not destroy you. It comes to bring you renewable life in fact. A life where you can always change, always be free to intake new information, take a new path, or do something nobody has ever done before.
In fact, the good news is that there is room for you in our world.
You are welcome and you matter there–but so is everyone else. It is big enough, and has enough resources for all of us. When people are not sitting on mountains of money–money which represents luxury to some but survival needs for others–there is plenty of it to circulate around an economy. In the New World, when things are not being wasted, there is enough food, water, shelter, space, and success for everyone. You are welcome to join us as an equal in the New World.
There is room for you to exist in our world–but there is not room for your prejudice. There is room for you, but not for your hatred. There is room for you, but not your ignorance.
Yes, there is room for you, but not for your greed, your ego, your implicit biases, your micro-aggression, your bigotry, your misogyny, your control, your imperialism, your industrial blindness, your destruction, your war, your fear mongering, your religious politics, or any other oppressive shenanigans you tried in this Old World.
You are welcome in our world, but your world will not stand in our world. We won’t let it stand in our world.
We, The People–the diverse, unique, talented, spirited, brilliant, empathetic people–are expecting better of the next world than you expected of this one. We do this for our children, for your children, for our planet, for each other and for our Selves. We fight for this New World now on behalf of all of existence. We fight like our lives depend on it–because the future of all life depends on it.
Trump, you may have won the electoral vote, but the People are the majority, and we have denounced you as our president. You should expect a whole lot of rebellion, and you should know it isn’t going to stop. It will not stop even after the inevitable fall of the Patriarchy. We will continue to fight for what is right and good for everyone, not just you. You have angered a previously silent force–and we will no longer give you the privilege of our silence as we have in the past.
In fact, never again will we gift you with the comfort of our silence.
Thank you for the wake up call. We’ll see you on the streets.
With love and with light,
~The Resistance
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